I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Roy Halliday 139
that the student chose to major in. Each department established its own attendance requirements.
Most departments allowed students to skip from zero to three class sessions per
semester, but the English department allowed students to cut as many classes as we wanted
to. I thought the English courses were a waste of time, so I asked a friend in my class to
keep me informed about upcoming exams, and I attended English classes only when there
was a test. On the days when my English class had no test, which was usually the case, I
audited Hans Sennholz’s classes in economics instead. I began to realize that economics
was not as dull as I thought. I ended up auditing two or three economics classes and actually
taking three or four others.
John started feeding me essays by Rothbard on political and historical topics. Each
Rothbard essay caused me to have an epiphany. I adopted new attitudes on the cold war,
American imperialism, disarmament, and collusion between business leaders and government.
And I became an anarcho-capitalist. I had been a near anarchist before, when I was
under the influence of Thoreau, but I back-slid a bit when I read Ayn Rand’s books and
Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. Conversations with John Peters (who became
my roommate in my junior and senior years at college) and reading Rothbard’s essays
convinced me that anarchism logically follows from the non-aggression principle, which I
was already committed to.
Observing the fascination with which John read Austrian economic literature got me
curious enough to try it. I started with the best. I read von Mises’s Human Action on my
summer vacation between my junior and senior years. I now believe that no one is well
educated unless they have read Human Action. I spent more time in college reading books
that had nothing to do with the courses I was taking than I did studying for my courses—
and my grades reflected this. The books that influenced me during this period include:
Theory and History, Socialism, and Epistemological Problems of Economics by Mises; Studies
in Philosophy, Politics and Economics by F. A. Hayek; Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel
Kant; What Social Classes Owe Each Other by William Graham Sumner; and The Man
versus the State and Social Statics by Herbert Spencer.
Sometimes I would become obsessed with an issue, and I would shut myself in my
dorm room for two or three days, cut all my classes, and write about the issue until I had
resolved it to my satisfaction. For example, when I read Human Action I noticed that Mises
argued for determinism on the grounds that it follows from the law of causality, but when
I read “The Mantle of Science” by Rothbard he argued for free will. So I stayed in my room,
thought and wrote about the issue, and when I emerged two or three days later I had changed
my opinion and agreed with Mises.
On another occasion, Rothbard’s essays on war and disarmament caused me to hibernate
for a couple days. When I rejoined the outside world, I had changed my views to agree
with Rothbard’s.
The only other hibernation event that I recall concerned the issue of punishment. It
struck me that punishment might not be consistent with the non-aggression principle, but
Rothbard argued strongly in favor of eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth, and stripe-for-stripe
retribution. After thinking about it for two or three days, I came out of my room opposed
to punishment, and I have held that view ever since.